A fantasy or simulation sports game or contest is an event in which each participant forms one or more virtual teams that use real-world, professional, or amateur athletes, and participants compete against other participants (or, in some cases, the operator) in competitions in which the outcome is determined by the statistical performances in real-world events of the athletes on each participant's virtual team. Depending on the contest variant, a contest may be season-long in duration (sometimes referred to as a “traditional” fantasy sports contest) or may last only a single week or even a single day (“daily fantasy sports,” or “DFS”). In the common season-long variety, no single athlete can be on more than one virtual team in a league, participants are usually allowed to trade athletes on their virtual teams with other participants in the league, and from time to time participants decide which athletes on their virtual teams to play, while the other athletes are on a virtual “bench,” and thus any statistics they generate do not count for the contest participant.
In the common weekly and daily contest varieties, participants select a new virtual team (or teams) at the outset of each weekly or daily contest. More than one participant may select the same athletes, but each athlete is assigned a salary value, and the selection of each virtual team is subject to a salary cap. In this variant, there is no trading of selected athletes and the performance of each athlete selected for a team counts for the selecting participant—i.e., no selected athlete is “benched.” In the common daily and weekly variants, as well as in the common season-long variant, the statistical performances of athletes in real-world events are converted into points pursuant to a structure made known to the participants in advance, and points are compiled and totaled to determine the outcome of each contest. Participants sometimes make use of computer modeling in order to assist them in the selection of athletes for their virtual (“fantasy”) teams. Alternatively or additionally, other types of games or events may also serve as the basis for a contest, such as educational games and contests.
Two or more fantasy sports contest participants compete against each other by building a virtual team of professional or amateur athletes from a particular real-world league or competition, and earn points based on the actual performance of those athletes in real-world competitions. Fantasy sports contests—whether traditional or DFS—can be structured in the form of competitions where participants pay an entry fee in order to participate, and participants may win all or a share of a prize depending on their overall performance in the competition. In such competitions, a percentage of the entry fees often goes to the operator of the competition as revenue. Entry fees may or may not fund the prize fund.
Sports play is conduct and action of an athlete during the game. Examples include a particular act or maneuver in a game such as: (1) in American football, the action during an attempt to advance the ball down the field, (2) in baseball, the action in which a batter or runner is put out, (3) in soccer, the action of kicking a penalty kick and having the opposing team's goalie attempt to stop the ball from entering the goal, (4) in basketball, the action of dribbling to the hoop and shooting the ball into the opposing team's basket, (5) in soccer, a defender sliding toward a ball which is in control of an opponent.
There are several problems encountered by fantasy sports operators and participants today in the United States. First, fantasy sports operators and participants must comply with applicable legal statutes and related regulations (such as the federal Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), codified at 31 U.S.C. § 3701 et seq.). In addition, the duration of a fantasy sports contest is generally limited by the duration of the season of the real-world sport (e.g., the NFL football season). This can place both an upper and lower bound on the play of fantasy sports. For example, operators that wish to offer participants a day-by-day or week-by-week experience for a sport with a long season may have to develop special game play rules to allow for a quicker result. On the upper end, operators that wish to offer participants the ability to continue playing a certain variant of fantasy sport contest beyond the duration of the season applicable to the relevant sport may be unable to do so because the real-world sport providing the statistics used by the fantasy sport contest has ended for the season.